Application testing and publishing

The application testing and publishing tools feature of this product provides run-time environments where you can test JSP files, servlets, HTML files, enterprise beans and Java classes.

You can use the server tools to test and publish resources from the following types of projects:

• Dynamic Web projects, which typically contain JSP files, HTML files, servlets, and beans

• Static Web projects, which typically contain HTML files and graphic files

• Enterprise Application projects, which may contain Java Archive (JAR) files or Web Archive (WAR) files or both, and pointers to other Web or EJB projects

• EJB projects, which contain enterprise beans

• J2EE Application client projects

After testing your application locally, you can use the tools to publish the application either locally or to another machine.

 

Supported run-time environments

The server tools provided in this product allow you to test your applications in different local or remote run-time environments. Where indicated, you can also use the tools to publish to these environments:

• WebSphere test environment. One or more versions of the WebSphere Application Server run-time environment, which you can use to test your applications directly from the development environment. Each test environment provides all the function of the full run-time environment, but eliminates dependencies on network connections. The WebSphere test environment is described in more detail as another topic in this documentation.

• WebSphere server. You can also test on and publish to one or more separately installed versions of WebSphere Application Server that reside either locally or on a remote machine. For WebSphere v5.x server¹, install Agent Controller on the same machine that WebSphere Application server resides on. For WebSphere v6.0 server, run the WebSphere File Transfer servlet application, filetransfer.ear. This application is installed and started on the WebSphere v6.0 server by default.

• Apache Tomcat². You can test on the Apache Tomcat run-time environment, running locally. With Tomcat, you can only test Web projects that contain servlets and JSPs. For more information on Tomcat, go to jakarta.apache.org/tomcat

• Static Web publishing server. You can publish static Web projects to an HTTP Web server.³

• J2EE publishing server. You can publish J2EE projects to a generic J2EE server.

• Server attach. You can attach to a WebSphere server that is started in debug mode.

 

Server definitions

The server tools use servers and configurations to test and publish your projects. Servers are definitions that identify where you want to test your projects. Server configurations contain setup information. You can either have the development environment create the servers and configurations automatically for you, or you can create them using a wizard. Resources that are used by these tools are covered in a separate topic.

 

Related tasks

Testing artifacts on a server
Managing servers

Related reference
Servers view

¹ WebSphere Application Server v5.x test environments and servers are not available in WebSphere Application Server Toolkit. WebSphere Application Server Toolkit only has WebSphere v6.0 server.

² Apache Tomcat servers are not available in WebSphere Application Server Toolkit

³ Static Web publishing servers are not